I was reading this book today, and wondered if I need to change my life mission slightly. I feel like I have spent my life trying to "help" people by supporting them, problem solving, trying to plan or figure out the future (EG teaching in many cases). I think though I didn't realize it, I was trying to keep people from experiencing suffering. Hoping that by being there to support and validate, teaching strategies, brainstorming new ways of doing stuff, the suffering could be diminished on both an individual and societal level. I was trying to create a "better" future, hoping that things that had caused suffering could be eliminated *both consciously and unconsciously, I guess I thought if I could get all the knowledge and share it with others, things could change. My youthful ego and naïveté?
I think I am in a later stage of life...and have to switch my mindset to recognizing what I have always known, but secretly hoped I could divert, which is that life will cause suffering (always), and that that isn't a bad thing. That even the moments of suffering and pain can have purpose, and that we shouldn't be avoiding them or trying to ignore or deny them, but experience and grow from them.
I have known this, but some part of me is always trying to avoid or undermine it, to rip it away, convince everyone that pain doesn't have to be suffering... but suffering is meaningful. It causes us to grow. To think and reflect. Pain... that's just a nuisance. Here one moment and gone the next.
I think I have to mindfully take on the mission that actually suffering is good, is an opportunity for people to find their meaning, and to hold out belief in people's ability to do so. Which is damn painful.
Every day at work I see people suffering, and sometimes I lose faith that it is worthwhile. The same with our society... so much needless suffering. But I guess we really do have to lose it all in order to get our heads out of our asses.
The suffering of this last year, did almost nothing to change us... half of us stuck our heads in the sand, the other half ignored the idea of a pandemic and made it worse. Nothing new has come of it on a societal level.
The book talks about how suffering is one of the ways people recognize the truth, that G-d calls us to him through all things, including suffering, and that when we finally see that (though it doesn't diminish the pain), it at least ends in hope. I have spent my life time knowing that suffering is part of life, but hoped that I could make it easier... but maybe sometimes it shouldn't be. G-d works in mysterious ways eh? When I am suffering I pray as much as when I feel awe... its those times in-between that I struggle to remember, so maybe I need to bring back that slogan teenaged Mike used to say "it's all good." And get back to believing it -though I have continually been beaten down by the merciless nature of the ways we choose to bring about our suffering... perhaps this is what we need?
I dunno. Maybe I am not fully there yet.
In any case, I need to stop being afraid all the time.
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